Resource Library

The Decision Bonsai are a hybrid of concept maps and decision trees. They were originally developed to give introductory statistics students a map to inference procedures but have evolved to be used for other topics. The tree is 'grown' during the semester so that students build a picture of the relationships in their mind. Recent work is moving toward the development of more complete concept maps for introductory statistics, statistical quality methods and probability and stochastic processes courses. These Decision Bonsai would be then pointed to at appropriate points in the concept maps.

The following exercise can illustrate the problem of bias in estimators to students in statistics courses. In some advanced courses an alternative estimator may be presented and properties of this estimator may be investigated via Monte Carlo studies.

A specially-designed statistical literacy course is needed for college students in majors that don't require statistics or mathematics. This paper suggests that key topics in conditional probability, multivariate regression and the vulnerability of statistical significance to confounding should be included and presents some new ways to teach these ideas.

This paper presents three graphs that are used in teaching students majoring in business and the humanities. These graphs show the influence of confounding, the meaning of statistical significance, and the influence of confounding on statistical significance.

This paper presents rules for determining whether an index variable in such a table is part or whole depending on whether the associated margin value is an average, a sum or a 100% sum. Tables with missing margin values -- date-indexed tables, half tables and control tables -- are analyzed. Recommendations are made to improve reader understanding of any table involving rates or percentages.

This article discusses teaching causality without being discipline specific. It explains the causal differences between description, prediction and explanation.

This survey assesses statistical literacy. The survey focuses on the general use of informal statistics in everyday situations: reading and interpreting tables and graphs involving rates and percentages.

This lesson is based on Lawrence Lesser's article that describes the set-up of the spreadsheet simulation and Cindia Stewart's lesson that seeks to answer the Birthday Problem using three different methods. Probability topics include: Sample Size, Law of Large Numbers, Complementary Probabilities, Independence of Events

This probability activity discusses the differences among various kinds of studies and which types of inferences can legitimately be drawn from each, as well as how sample statistics reflect the values of population parameters and use sampling distributions as the basis for informal inference. The procedure and assessment are provided.

This activity discusses probability topics, such as: sample space, independent events, Law of Large Numbers, deviation percentage. A Excel program is required for this activity, which can be reached via the website.